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Add a third one: "turns at the hips". All three imply a conscious decision to use hip rotation to source or generate power, or initiate/create movement. All three are inefficient ways to do this IMO, especially keeping shoulders and hips rotating in unison as this will cause one to get locked and stopped pretty easily. Also, if hips and shoulders are rotating together, what's happening to the knees?

I didn't understand the difference between center and hips well until I started having to do seated kokyudosa from a crosslegged, therefore externally static, position. I could not move my hips but could instead focus on free movement of my center - not as "there" as I'd like but in fact its a lovely exercise for it....

Yes in as much as if wanting to use your shoulder then the connection with the hips is imperative.

Secondly I would say that two things can be practiced:
1) Turning from centre.
2) Turning from hips (koshi) (kua)

I would ask you Mary as to which part of the hips do you feel you are moving ie: the whole bowl so to speak or do you concentrate on relaxing the back of the hips and thus that pivotal point.?

Personally now I find the shoulders 'disappearing' when turning the hips, going 'passive' rather than 'active' and if I am reading your exercise correctly it would then lead me more to a kokyu ho type exercise.

IMHO, taking the structural alignment from the foot, up the leg, "through" the hips/center/hara, extended into the elbows, out the fingers, extended/projected into and through the uke's center, towards a kuzushi point tends to do it for me.

Visualize the path. Energy follows focus.

Lynn Seiser PhD
Yondan Aikido & FMA/JKD
We do not rise to the level of our expectations, but fall to the level of our training. Train well. KWATZ!

Shoulder disappearing then reemerging... blending with uke's push when needed... not if if not needed. Each uke is so different.

Granted. I agree.

As an added bit of interest your description reminded me of something I was taught or rather shown many moons ago and although it's not really to do with hip/shoulder it is to do with turning and then turning back.

I was wondering how comes the teacher could turn me back and flip me with hardly any movement from himself. He showed me what it looked like if done so that I could see it. He proceeded to take my attack and lead me around with a complete tai sabaki and then turn back with kote gaeshi. All very slowly and comfortably.

He said after lots of practice and focus on the flows and energy of such basics you can already have it done which looks to the outsider like a short cut or something totally different. Yet energy wise it's the same as that slow well recognizable form.

I also like the image of a double-cross: in which there are two horizontal arms (the shoulders and the hips) directly aligned with each other and a third vertical post (the spine). Turn neither the shoulders or the hips, turn the spine.

Lynn Seiser PhD
Yondan Aikido & FMA/JKD
We do not rise to the level of our expectations, but fall to the level of our training. Train well. KWATZ!

I also like the image of a double-cross: in which there are two horizontal arms (the shoulders and the hips) directly aligned with each other and a third vertical post (the spine). Turn neither the shoulders or the hips, turn the spine.

Yes....thanks.

I have couple of students who can't find their hips...hense my fascination with this right now.

I wrote about this when I talked about Koshi. Basically Japanese use the word to mean hips but more specifically the back of the hips, base of the spine.

So when Japanese teachers used to tell my teacher to open his hips he found many didn't understand as they saw the hips conceptually as that bowl or even the sides rather than what was meant.

Once again it's a western concept put over the Japanese and so people struggle with understanding it.

To get the reality to my students I get them practicing the feeling of sitting on a comfortable chair or setee and how that action is where you naturally relax the back of the hips and and lower it. Thus awareness of koshi and the Japanese meaning for hips is gained.

I then give examples of let's say the horse stance and how that is sitting in koshi.

I wrote about this when I talked about Koshi. Basically Japanese use the word to mean hips but more specifically the back of the hips, base of the spine.

So when Japanese teachers used to tell my teacher to open his hips he found many didn't understand as they saw the hips conceptually as that bowl or even the sides rather than what was meant.

Once again it's a western concept put over the Japanese and so people struggle with understanding it.

To get the reality to my students I get them practicing the feeling of sitting on a comfortable chair or setee and how that action is where you naturally relax the back of the hips and and lower it. Thus awareness of koshi and the Japanese meaning for hips is gained.

I then give examples of let's say the horse stance and how that is sitting in koshi.